Rex Stout Read Free Page A

glanced at the photograph she had put down, the unidentified one, had bent over to look at it, and then had abruptly straightened up; and the expression on his face frightened her, though it was directed not at her but at the stranger. Though she had seen him angry before, she had never seen his lips as thin as that, nor his eyes drawn so narrow.
    “Ah,” he said. Then suddenly he smiled, but it was not a smile to reassure anybody, least of all the man it was aimed at. “There is some explanation of this, I suppose? This picture of a lady—an old friend of mine?”
    The stranger smiled back. “I can make one up.”
    Vail took a step. “Who are you?”
    The other took a wallet from his pocket, fished out a card, and offered it. Vail took it and looked at it:
    A. HICKS
M.S.O.T.P.B.O.M.
    He looked up, unsmiling. “This—this hash?”
    The other gestured it away. “Unimportant. One of my titles. Melancholy Spectator of the Psychic Bellyache of Mankind. The name is Hicks.”
    “Who sent you here?”
    Hicks shook his head. “I didn’t come to see you, Mr. Vail. Some other time, maybe.” He reached for envelope and photographs.
    “Leave those things here and get out!”
    But Hicks gathered them up with one swoop of his hand and made for the elevator. In a moment a down car stopped for him.
    As he emerged from the building no sign of the smile was on his face. He was beginning to suspect that he was in for something nasty. It seemed likely, considering how startlingly Vail’snarrowed eyes had been those of a wary and malevolent pig, that some one was going to-get hurt.
    He sat on a bench in Bryant Park and thought it over.
    The office of R. I. Dundee and Company was on 40th Street near Madison Avenue, a mere five-minute walk from that of its hottest competitor, Republic Products Corporation.
    At eleven o’clock that Thursday morning, anyone seeing R. I. Dundee seated at his desk would not have guessed that only ten minutes ago a phone call from the Chicago branch had brought the glad tidings that a $68,000 contract for plastics had just been closed with Fosters, the biggest manufacturers of loose-leaf binders in the country. Dundee sat staring at a corner of the rug with an expression of mingled dejection and choler. With his regular precise features and his well-fitting conservative gray coat, he looked like a man intended by both nature and himself to be neat and personable, but with his disarranged hair and his bloodshot eyes, the intention was shockingly impugned.
    He shifted in his chair and groaned, and when there was a knock at the door he yelled in a tone of extreme exasperation, “Come in!”
    A boy entered and handed him a card:
    A. HICKS
C.F.M.O.B.
    Beneath was written in ink, “Have just seen Mr. James Vail. It might interest you.”
    Dundee straightened up and gave the card another look. He rubbed it with his thumb and forefinger, and looked at it again.
    “What does this man look like?”
    “He looks all right, sir. Except his eyes maybe. They’re kind of gleamy and menacing.”
    “Send him in here.”
    The boy went. When, a moment later, the visitor entered, he got a cool reception. Dundee stayed in his chair, offered no greeting, and stared up at the newcomer. Hicks stood on the other side of the desk and returned the stare, then circled around to a chair, sat, and said:
    “Candidate for Mayor of Babylon. Not Babylon, Long Island. Babylon.”
    Dundee blinked with irritation. “What the devil are you talking about?”
    Hicks pointed to the card which the other still held in his fingers. “Those letters. That’s what they stand for. To save you the trouble of asking. Sometimes they help to open a conversation, but in this case of course Jimmie Vail’s name would have been enough. Wouldn’t it?”
    “What about Vail? What do you want?”
    Hicks smiled at him. “First I’d like to get acquainted a little. If I bounce it right back at you, what I want, you’ll probably tell me to get out,